Quite a few states have innovation programs, mechanisms for jumpstarting new and interesting ways to improve government, but Nicholas Stowe, Washington state's outgoing chief technology officer, shares on this week’s Priorities Podcast why he thinks his state’s innovation and modernization program has enjoyed an especially favorable success rate. “We really tried to maximize reusing existing governance processes,” he says. Also on this episode is Wendy Wickstrom, web and user experience manager at Washington Technology Solutions, who shares how flipping a procurement process upside-down helped the state create what officials say is a new model for reducing risk and fostering a more connected government. “We knew we wanted agency participation, but we didn’t want to dictate every deliverable that they gave us,” she says.
This week’s top stories:
After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls.
The House of Representatives passed a bill by voice vote Monday evening that would reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. Enjoying bipartisan support, the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience, or PILLAR, Act is now open to be considered by the Senate.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Tuesday announced it’s issued approvals to 18 states on their final proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
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Quite a few states have innovation programs, mechanisms for jumpstarting new and interesting ways to improve government, but Nicholas Stowe, Washington state's outgoing chief technology officer, shares on this week’s Priorities Podcast why he thinks his state’s innovation and modernization program has enjoyed an especially favorable success rate. “We really tried to maximize reusing existing governance processes,” he says. Also on this episode is Wendy Wickstrom, web and user experience manager at Washington Technology Solutions, who shares how flipping a procurement process upside-down helped the state create what officials say is a new model for reducing risk and fostering a more connected government. “We knew we wanted agency participation, but we didn’t want to dictate every deliverable that they gave us,” she says.
This week’s top stories:
After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls.
The House of Representatives passed a bill by voice vote Monday evening that would reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. Enjoying bipartisan support, the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience, or PILLAR, Act is now open to be considered by the Senate.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Tuesday announced it’s issued approvals to 18 states on their final proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
How Kansas lost the 'weird shortcodes' and modernized its UI system
Priorities Podcast
15 minutes 29 seconds
4 weeks ago
How Kansas lost the 'weird shortcodes' and modernized its UI system
Star Wars and disco were hip when Kansas built its previous unemployment insurance system and it was “sufficient,” Kansas Labor Secretary Amber Shultz says. But on the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Shultz describes how, over the course of two years, the state transformed that system into a modern one, with a modern user interface. A system that had to be taken offline constantly — “a house of cards” — has been replaced by one that has nearly perfect uptime, she says. “Our contact center representatives, they couldn’t use a mouse, and they had to memorize all these hundreds of weird shortcodes for abbreviation back in those days, and then the code was not documented,” she says. Today, the state heralds a different story, one in which call centers see 60% fewer calls and processing time has been reduced by 80%.
Top stories this week:
New York City this week announced a new pilot program that integrates a new emergency alert system with the city’s public schools. The system, which leaders claim is the first of its kind in the United States, provides an automated method of contacting 911 in the event of active shooter scenarios or other threats.
As the federal government shutdown stretches on, state agencies are grappling with technical, financial and policy adjustments following a federal directive to pause processing of SNAP benefits next month.
Nearly all states and territories have submitted their final proposals to the federal government detailing how they plan to spend their allotments of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Given recent adjustments to how the program is administered, though, the current proposals could leave roughly half of the program’s $42 billion unspent.
New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Priorities Podcast
Quite a few states have innovation programs, mechanisms for jumpstarting new and interesting ways to improve government, but Nicholas Stowe, Washington state's outgoing chief technology officer, shares on this week’s Priorities Podcast why he thinks his state’s innovation and modernization program has enjoyed an especially favorable success rate. “We really tried to maximize reusing existing governance processes,” he says. Also on this episode is Wendy Wickstrom, web and user experience manager at Washington Technology Solutions, who shares how flipping a procurement process upside-down helped the state create what officials say is a new model for reducing risk and fostering a more connected government. “We knew we wanted agency participation, but we didn’t want to dictate every deliverable that they gave us,” she says.
This week’s top stories:
After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls.
The House of Representatives passed a bill by voice vote Monday evening that would reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. Enjoying bipartisan support, the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience, or PILLAR, Act is now open to be considered by the Senate.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Tuesday announced it’s issued approvals to 18 states on their final proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
